The pause that refreshes

Well, the elections are over, so I suppose the money spigot is turned off. It seems Wisconsin has been political ground zero for some time, and all the activity has attracted a lot of financial involvement from all over. I'd like to have 1% of the dough that flowed across the borders; either that or own a TV station. All I can say is we really must have something special here in Wisconsin.

All this activity deserves some analysis, and we have it for you. We have assembled a team as expert as anyone else's in divining the chicken entrails of this election cycle. The least rigorous certification program in existence is that for political pundit. Not that these folks don't know what they're talking about.

Bruce Murphy is from out of town (Milwaukee), so he is at a safe distance from reprisals in commenting on the presidential race. His assessment might not be Madisonian, but it is probably a good thing to hear from an outsider once in a while.

Former mayor and current Isthmus columnist Dave Cieslewicz drew the state Legislature assignment. How did the Democrats do in trying to hold onto the Senate, regain the Assembly? You may think you know the answer to those questions, but there's always some quirk - some guy who finds himself the linchpin to some vital coalition, and decides to exploit it.

Ruth Coniff, Isthmus contributor and political editor of The Progressive magazine, wrote our pre-election story on Tommy vs. Tammy. She now gets to write the epilogue for that race. News editor Judy Davidoff writes about the Mark Pocan walkover for Congress.

It's been a long slog since the election of 2010, and an amazing amount of political theater has played out since then. Here's hoping we can live in less interesting times for a while. I think there's more to life than politics.